Camp

The Geneva Heights 3rd Ward at Mia Shalom. (I am in the back row with the white sunglasses on)

Taken from my camp journal...
"these last 3...no 4 days have been a cold blur...I thought I would Journal everything I did. But so far this is the 1st time my hands have been warm enough to write anything. We arrived tuesday eve (around 2 or 3) and it was pretty warm up here. I was actually afraid that I packed too warm clothes. We had a fun night dinner with the stake chicken salad croissants and fruit. Then we all did our skits. Ours turned out really cute. Then we came back and played Camp Idol. Sarah Christensen talked me into singing "girls just want to have fun". It was great because one of the girls, Elizabeth played Simon Cowell and was so funny and dead on. Some of the girls thought she was too harsh but I laughed so hard. I kept clapping with my feet...up in the air. Afterwards we ate smores. All in all fun. I still wasn't into singing songs and acting crazy. I was actually too hot that night.

We woke up wed. morn to probably 3 or 4 inches of snow. I was up at 6:00 (after a night of no sleep). We cooked pancakes for 32 in the freezing cold. I don't think anyone actually had a warm breakfast. We spent the entire day indoors as it snowed and snowed and snowed. Only to go out to use the bathrooms (we had toilets about 100 yards from our camp). We were all so wet...so cold and I was kinda excited, WHAT AN ADVENTURE!! Lunch was sandwiches (because it was too cold for any cooking) more lying around. Dinner was ravioli and salad. It is hard to cook up here it took an hour to boil water. Wendy Talbert is amazing, she cooked for us the whole time. When we were making pancakes she and I were talking about what a shame it was we weren't going to eat any of our desserts. I said too bad we don't know how they made those snow desserts on little house on the prairie. We started brainstorming after that and came up with a dessert with snow. We took raspberry pie filling and apple juice and poured it over fresh snow. YUMMY. Of course we followed that with hot chocolate so they could warm back up but it was so fun to make dessert out of a bad situation. I gave a thought on COURAGE before bed...which we all needed. It was a LONG day but fun. THat night I don't think I have EVER been soo cold. I woke up and for the first time thought..."I don't think I can do this." If I was cold (I never get cold) I knew the girls must be cold.

I bucked up and got dressed breakfast was at the pavillion (a covered eating area, with a fire place). It was 24 degree's at 9:00 that morning. Most of the girls shoes were so wet that they couldn't stay close to being warm. I got to stand by a fire that morning for the first time in what felt like an eternity as we had NO fires on Wednesday and Thursday (until night time). We all came back to camp after breakfast and they told us to pack up. WE WERE GOING HOME!!! For me it was bittersweet news. I was having a great time. I LOVE LOVE my girls and what funner thing to do than sit around and eat and talk. We packed up in record time and were all sitting around playing catch phrase, when we were told it was too dangerous to try and go home. Everyone was crying when they found this out. Not me of course. But they were all pretty dissapointed. We were told that it was going to warm up and that we would be safer if we stayed. We had Jumbalaya for lunch (soooo yummy for cold bodies). Then we sat in sleeping bags and I tried to cheer everyone up. It was still so cold. Around 3 or 4 on Thursday the sun came out and the snow started to melt. We got a fire started and also got news that our bishopric was coming up with more sleeping bags and more jackets. They called and got people to gather everything they could and had enough coats and mittens and scarfs and hats for practically everyone. It was a real blessing and we all slept much warmer that night. (I think it was in the mid 30's in our cabin both nights) Our stake president came up and told us that he had gone to the temple twice trying to decide what to do with us. The first time afterwards he was covered in sweat and on his way to the car a big gust of wind came and he said he was "soooo cold" and that he couldn't warm up. His thought then was..."they are freezing up there" That is when we got the call that we were coming home. He felt like he still wasn't sure and went again to the temple. The second time he thought of his great great grandma crossing the planes. Her husband woke up one morning and told her he couldn't go on he was too cold and there was too much snow. She then told him "then you can stay there and ROT" THe son wrote in his journal that day that "dad got over dying and got up". President Thomas then knew that we had to stay. He said he was proud of us and that we can do hard things. He knew the weather was going to warm up and he didn't want us to miss out on girls camp. I knew that there were a lot of people praying for us and that really helped. That night was testimony meeting. Dinner was great. And the bishopric brought up costco pies. The pies were freezing cold but it was still fun. It was good having men up there. I am not meant to be in a girls only existance. My whole life I have surrounded myself with men, boys whatever. I felt so much better with them up there.

Friday was great, we had scones for breakfast, dutch oven pizza for lunch and chicken casserole for dinner. It was the first day we went back to the schedual. We had a friendship hike, games, crafts, singing, and we all sat and played liar liar by the fire before bed. Oh and ofcourse we went on a snipe hunt. There was too much snow for it to be that good but it was still fun. I slept great that night and was finally warm.

Saturday we were up volcano pancakes. THen we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. It was a great week. I got the award for "MOST PREPARED" (I knew it was going to snow). Then we stood around playing and dancing. I taught them a couple songs. Then on to the bus. I was the only leader that rode with 3 wards. So I got to talk on the speaker thing. I LOVED THAT. Hahahaa. GIRLS CAMP WAS SO MUCH FUN. I have a feeling I will be doing this for the rest of my life.
Here is our Cabin. Now just so you know...There was no heat in these cabins. And no insullation. We had to tape up the holes in the wood with duct tape. We slept 16 girls in each one and in ours we all slept downstairs because it was too cold up stairs. IT WAS CROWDED.

The view the first morning of snow.

Here we are trying to make pancakes.

I am not actually asleep in this picture, I just am pretending. I would take off my wet pants and socks and just wear the awesomest long johns and dry socks in the cabin. I did a lot of long john dancing as you can imagine.

I just stayed in my bed all day. It was cozy

Here are all of our ward's leaders. Last year they had 3 so it was a big group. I love them all.

This is the group of girls that I did cooking and cleaning with. We were the RAINBOW DINOSAURS that go RAWR. I love them.

Finally the sun came out. You can see there was still a lot of snow.